Children’s Rights

Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Chakrabarti

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord has an important and distinguished history in challenging Governments and safeguarding children, and he is absolutely right that we must protect children at risk of abuse, particularly by stopping vulnerable children falling through cracks in services and ensuring that we always know where they are if they need protection. That is why, for example, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we will support professionals to keep children safe, in particular by making provision for a consistent identifier for every child and for a requirement to establish multi-agency child protection teams for each local authority area, ensuring, as he quite rightly asked, that staff and agencies are working closely together to protect children most in need of that protection.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, we have one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in the world: in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is just 10, and in Scotland it is 12. Troubled children are children in need, not criminals. Will the Minister consider a potential review of those ages to make those children less vulnerable and better able to be protected by agencies and authorities in the future?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

In line with the UNCRC, we recognise the age of a child in the UK as being under 18 years of age. In that way, children are treated differently from adults. However, we do have an age of criminal responsibility of 10, and we do not intend to change that at this time.